Wolverine Politics

Providing you with your daily recommended dose of punditry.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

This is why the BCS sucks

They haven't made the BCS picks yet, but I sense already Michigan is getting screwed.

Let's face it: College football is subjective to opinion. There are not hard measurements of a team's ability. Records mean very little. Polls, freaking polls, are what determines someone's placement in a national title picture.

It's about money, not competition. The NCAA does tournaments in all other sports and its lower-grade divisions, but not in D1 football. It is ridiculous. That's why Louisville was facing the Sun Bowl as an 11-1 team if Rutgers hadn't lost. Notre Dame is considered the bigger money team, even though Louisville had a better record.

And we come to Michigan. Florida gets to play an extra game, and moves up over Michigan. USC gets to play two games after the Big Ten season ends, which is clearly set up to favor USC making late moves in the polls. In short, Michigan gets punished for having played out its schedule on time.

Yes, I'm a Michigan grad, and I will have an internal bias. But it doesn't change the truth of the argument. If the Big Ten had a championship game, or if Michigan went to Hawaii or some other team to play a late-game, and won, they'd be second, not Florida. But they play Ohio State last, sit, and get knocked down in rankings because of it. I mean, USC was one win less than Michigan going into yesterday and was ranked higher.

And the argument that Michigan shouldn't be in a championship game because they didn't win their conference completely F'ing ignores the fact that they didn't win their conference because the #1 team is IN their conference. They lost by three points to the best team in the nation, and they were one penalty away from likely winning that game. They are taking a severe beating in the polls because they lost by a field goal to the nation's best team. A rematch is perfectly valid. Florida, who passed Michigan, struggled with Arkansas, a lower-ranked team, and were losing to them at one point.

Finally, if you look at the one team they lost to, Michigan only lost to the best team in the nation in a squeaker. No. 11 Auburn beat Florida by ten. End of argument. A win is a win, and it shouldn't be subjective to all this ridiculous crap.

This situation, more than ever, calls for a playoff. To further my point, a 10-2 LSU team is ranked ahead of 11-1 Louisville and 11-1 Wisconsin. The BCS is far too swayed by biases towards certain teams.

An easy playoff is this. Two bowl games on Jan. 1 or 2 feature 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3. The other two major bowls host other BCS teams via the normal process. On Jan. 8, the winners of the two matchups face for the national title. The BCS chairman, in fact, supports a system such as this. It's one extra game to play, but the BCS can pony up the extra travel money, the games take place when classes don't, so it doesn't affect the studies of the students either, and it would take care of a situation like this, where you have three 11-1 teams and a 12-0 team.

It's time for this biased system to be laid to rest. The BCS is about as bad as when Nebraska won the 1997 USA Today poll because Philip Fulmer was pissed at Michigan and downranked them out of the title, and Michigan won the AP Poll. It's time for this crap to end. Let the players decide who's the best in a fair competition.

Update: 5:00 p.m. PST: Waiting right now to hear the selections, and just finished reading another column saying that a team that didn't win its conference shouldn't play for the national championship. Yeah, Michigan didn't win the conference, Ohio frickin State is in it. Should a 10-2 Pac-10 team be in over an 11-1 second place Big Ten team for instance, just because they won their conference? That argument doesn't hold water.

Update 2: 5:10 p.m. PST: Well, it's Florida. I hope they get crushed the way that they did against Nebraska in 1996. Steve Spurrier went into that game having campaigned for the spot, and they lost 62-24. I hate Ohio State, but at this moment, I despise Florida more for getting a shot that they will probably blow mightily. Michigan would've been guaranteed to have a close game. Florida is hardly a guarantee given their past record against teams outside the SEC.

About Me

I graduated from the University of Michigan-Dearborn. I served as a staff writer, sports editor, op-ed editor, managing editor, and editor-in-chief during my five years at the UM-D paper, The Michigan Journal.